Intravenous (IV) devices date back to 1831, when Dr. Thomas Latta treated a choleric elderly Englishwoman with an IV injection to “throw the fluid immediately into the circulation”. There a vessel containing the fluid was held manually. Today IV infusion therapy is used routinely when fluid administration by another route might be physiologically less effective or simply less convenient for health care professionals. Modern infusion vessels for IV fluids are typically supported by a pole or a stand.
Mobile designs for IV stands are used widely to facilitate patient mobility, particularly in light of recent findings that early ambulation improves patient recovery times and reduces the length of their hospital stays. Yet greater mobility of these IV stands has also been associated with increased risk of in-hospital falls by the patient. Medicare and insurance are not required to cover the cost of treatment arising from such falls, yet by law hospitals and care facilities are responsible for those costs. The average per-patient cost for care after a patient's in-facility fall is $13,316 more than for comparable patients who have not fallen. See: Fisher et al., “Early Ambulation and Length of Stay in Older Adults Hospitalized with Acute Illness,” Archive of Internal Medicine, 170:21 (National Institutes of Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Nov. 22, 2010); risk factors in Anonymous, “Understanding Fall Risk Prevention and Protection,” posted at www.sizewise.net/getattachment/2d5c6915-509c-4d99-a653-bef8bcc56fdc/sw-fall-risk-toolkit.aspx; Ganz et al. “Preventing Falls in Hospitals: A Toolkit for Improving Quality of Care,” (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, January 2013).
In addition to fall-related hazards, the current design of IV poles is less than ideal for patients in other ways. The pole has a tall mast, the crown of which bears a load of fluids and commonly tips over. Often a single pole has a multitude of IV bags, each for a different drug to treat the hospitalized individual. Each bag has its own tubing to supply the implant on a person's arm. The tubes are cumbersome, may tangle, and sometimes yank the implant from a patient's arm when the stand topples. The addition of sensors, medicines and monitors to the pole adds to the apparatus weight and difficulty of control by patients.
The IV pole designs have disadvantages for nursing as well. Nurses in units for surgery, intensive care, and emergency care commonly criticize the designs as inconvenient due to their bulk, excessive height, large size of base footprint, tipping hazard, poor ergonomics, entanglement of cord and tubing, and lack of user-friendliness for patients who need to slow or stop a traveling pole. The prior art contains a variety of attempts to improve pole designs.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,627,431 A, issued 3 Feb. 1953 to Sechrist, provides methods for attaching a collar to a pole.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,929,210 A, issued 30 Dec. 1975 to Morris et al. teaches use of a spring to retract tubing, cord and or wire.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,065 A, issued 2 Feb. 1999 to Chiu, discloses use of a mechanical hand brake for use in walking aids.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,892,279 A, issued 9 Jan. 1990 to Lafferty et al. incorporates a folding tripod feature to facilitate portability of IV stands by allowing quick collapse and redeployment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,585,683 B2, issued 19 Sep. 2001 to Sutton et al., discloses a structure with a form-fitting clip to hold a single tube.
US Pub. Pat. App. No. 2004/0144673 A1 by Mark Buczek, published 29 Jul. 2004, provides passages in a surgical tray to take up slack in surgical tubing in an operating room.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,313,066 B2, issued 20 Jun. 2012 to Hampton et al., discloses a quick-release system for wheels of an IV stand, and employs a plurality of casters.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,010,709 B1, issued 21 Apr. 2015 to Culpepper et al., teaches use of a ceiling-mounted articulated arm with an electromagnetic braking system to control the momentum of a suspended structure.
Although features of several of those inventions are in common use today, the contemporary design of mobile IV support devices continue to suffer from the disadvantages discussed above. Thus there is an ongoing need for improvements in their design.